"Everything," she said.
"Be specific."
"My home. My freedom. You."
"And what did you keep?"
The question confused her.
"A few trinkets," she said.
"You’re being too literal." Marc leaned back against the wall. The sunlight caught his hair the way it always had, turning the brown to copper. "Let’s try another way to look at this. When you came aboard that ship, what did the alpha take from you?"
She wasn’t sure where he was going with this line of questioning, if there was even a point or if this was just the fever.
"I just told you."
"What else?"
She thought about it the way she'd think about a problem in the vineyard, turning it over, examining the roots. "Nothing else."
"Nothing?"
She let out a shaking sigh. Anatole gave more than he took. "He didn't take my voice. He didn't take my ability to fight back. He didn't take away my right to say no, even though it cost him." She was speaking faster now, the words coming from somewhere the fever hadn't touched. "He gave me run of the ship. He taught me things. He never forced a bond. Even duringthe heat, he came to the door and said 'tell me to leave.' He gave me the choice every time."
"Interesting." Marc smiled. It was his real smile, the one that crinkled the corners of his eyes, and even knowing he was a fever dream wearing her brother's face, the sight of it made her happy.
"The other brides," he said. "Did they get choices?"
The vineyard shifted. Not collapsing or dissolving the way fever dreams usually did, but rearranging itself, the rows of vines becoming corridors, the grapes becoming lanterns, and suddenly she was standing in the forbidden room on the Barbe-Bleue. The six brides lay on their stone platforms, preserved and silent, and the broken mirror reflected nothing from its shattered face on the far wall.
But the brides were not still. They were sitting up, one by one, and turning their heads slowly.
Marguerite was the first to speak. "I wanted adventure," Marguerite said. "From the moment I saw Anatole I knew I could have that type of life with him. I married him in secret and was so relieved to finally be free of my mother." Marguerite's hands rested on the stone beneath her. "But I was wrong. I was never free. When I looked in the mirror, I saw a girl who had married a wolf in the dark and called it romance. It might have grown into love, but the curse didn’t give me the chance."
The second bride, Celeste, spoke from her platform. She was compact and fierce, with the look of a woman who had fought every day of her life. "My pack alpha sold me to Anatole because the price was right. I tried to kill him the first night. He respected me for it." A brief smile crossed her face. "I lived to best him, best the curse. I loved him, but I loved the challenge more."
The others spoke too. Isabeau, Vivienne, Lucienne. Each story different in its details, each one arriving at the same place. Isabeau had been seeking status. Vivienne wanted a cure for herloneliness. Lucienne was grateful for Anatole rescuing her from a worse alpha.
And then there was Adele. "I loved him and I knew exactly what I was doing," Adele said. "But I wanted to be a mother more than anything else. More than being an omega, more than being a wife.”
Six women. Six loves.
"I was sold like Celeste. I was lonely like Vivienne. But I wanted to stay in my vineyard, not run away like Lucienne, and I didn’t want adventure or status, like Marguerite and Celeste.”
Marguerite tilted her head. "And now?"
“I love the adventure of being with Anatole. Aside from my brother dying, I’m glad I left the vineyard. I love the challenge of his life and I’m his equal. Anatole saw to that. I have status on the ship. I’m no longer lonely, and I never will be again. I want to be a mother, an omega, and a wife.”
One by one, the brides disappeared.
The room pulsed. Jeanne's vision wavered, the edges of the dream going soft, the fever pulling at her like a current.
The fever broke.
She came up gasping, the way a diver breaks the surface after too long underwater, her lungs hauling in air that tasted of salt and wood and the sour-sweet wrongness of her own changing scent. The cabin was dim. A single lantern swung from the beam above, casting moving shadows across the walls.
Anatole was beside her. Sitting in the chair he'd pulled close to the bed, his hand wrapped around hers, his body curved forward like a man bracing against a wind that wouldn't stop. He hadn't slept. She could see it in the hollows beneath his eyes, the way his skin had gone gray with exhaustion, the stiffness in his shoulders that spoke of hours spent holding the same position because moving would mean letting go of her hand.
